The Lives and Times of the Popes - Saint Soter – A.D. 168

Fondi, near Naples, was the native place of Saint Soter, also in his life called Concordius. He was created pontiff A.D. 168. Critics are not agreed as to the authenticity of the decretals published under his name. Novaes here repeats the warning which he had already given, that all the decretals up to those of Saint Siricius, the thirty-ninth pope, who was created A.D. 384, should be examined with the most scrupulous attention. By the testimony of Saint Denis, we know that Saint Soter fulfilled his duties with an unfailing zeal, and that he, like his predecessors, who had to use great circumspection, delighted in aiding distant and indigent Christians. He inquired into the sufferings and needs of those who were persecuted for the faith. He sent without delay consolation and provision to those whom the emperor’s orders condemned to work in the mines. The more prosperous Christians were called upon to give large alms, by means of which such sufferings of Christians in the most distant parts of the earth could be diminished and alleviated. At the same time, this pontiff opposed the heresies which gnawed the vitals of Christianity. By means of an affectation of extreme strictness of life, the heretics deluded the multitude: they pretended that the time had arrived which they called the millennium.

The zeal of the sovereign pontiff obtained the important concession that Christians, merely as Christians, should not be condemned – that unless charged with some distinct crime against the state, their Christian creed should not be imputed to them as a crime.

In five ordinations Saint Soter created eleven bishops, eighteen priests, and nine deacons. He governed the Church nine years and a few months. From the cemetery of Saint Calixtus, where his body was at first buried, it was removed by Sergius II, in 845, to the Church of Saints Sylvester and Martin a’ i Monti, and then to the Appian Way, to the Church of Saint Sixtus, belonging to the Dominican Fathers.

To this reign belongs the miracle of the thundering legion. The following account is given of it by Bossuet:

“In an extreme scarcity of water that was endured by the army of Marcus Aurelius in Germany, a Christian legion obtained rain sufficient to quench the thirst of all the troops, and accompanied by thunder that terrified the enemy. This miracle caused the legion to receive, or to have confirmed to it, the title of the thundering. The emperor was touched by that miracle, and wrote to the senate in favor of the Christians. Subsequently his false priests persuaded him to attribute to their prayers and to their false gods the miracle for which the pagans had not even presumed to express a wish.”

Evidence of this miracle is to be seen in the bas-reliefs of the Antonine column. The Romans are there represented with weapons in hand against the barbarians, who are seen extended upon the ground with their horses, while a torrent of rain is pouring upon them, and they seem to be prostrated by the thunderbolts. On that occasion, in fact, Marcus Aurelius, in his letter to the senate, declared that his army had been saved by the prayers of the Christian soldiers.

- from "The Lives and Times of the Popes", by Alexis-François Artaud de Montor